As Applicant Numbers Decline, L.A. Seeks To Bolster Force

By |December 22, 2005

Kenneth Garner, a 28-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, was recently promoted to commander in charge of recruiting new officers, reports Copley News Service. Garner said the job ahead of him — helping Chief William Bratton achieve his stated goal when he took office in 2002 of bolstering the force from 9,000 sworn officers to 10,000 — is as challenging as any assignment in his career. The odds seem stacked against him. The 5,545 people who applied for police jobs in the last fiscal year were the fewest in at least a decade, and the number of applicants has been steadily declining since 2002. Last year, a slowdown in hiring caused the applicant pool to dry up. The defeat of a half-cent, countywide sales tax to fund 1,000 more officers didn’t help.

Now, up to several hundred veteran officers who deferred their retirement under a 2001 voter-approved incentive program are expected to be leaving the force in the coming year. Despite this, Bratton said he remains optimistic that he can get 10,000 officers under his leadership. He said he doesn’t even think it is unrealistic that the force will grow to 12,500 in a matter of years. Los Angeles has about one officer for every 400 residents, while other major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago have one officer for every 215 residents. Garner wants the LAPD to recruit potential officers as systematically as some colleges recruit athletes. He hopes to have scouts scattered across the city looking for prospects in what he calls a “community recruiter program. Clergy members and community and business leaders will take a three-hour course to learn the qualities that make a successful officer candidate.

The legislation marks a major change for Republicans, who long hve embraced a law-and-order rallying cry. Now many GOP senators argue for rehabilitating more offenders rather than long-time incarceration.

An Arizona doctor argues that the government should have learned from previous federal anti-drug strategies that blanket prohibition doesn’t work. He calls for scrapping attempts to curtail opioids and replacing it with “harm reduction” policies.

Expensive medications for inmates can lead to substandard care and delays in treatment, and that may have lasting—even deadly—consequences for incarcerated individuals, writes a prison health care advocate.

Murder rates in the nation’s 30 largest cities are projected to fall by nearly 6 percent this year according to the latest data, undercutting claims that the nation is experiencing a “crime wave,” says the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

School safety commission proposes ending a federal guideline telling schools not to punish minorities at higher rates. The panel largely sidestepped issues relating to guns, although it favors arming some school personnel.